Gene Watson interview revisited

In 2009, I had the opportunity to interview Gene for the now quiescent http://www.9513.com after the release of his A Taste of The Truth album.

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PWD: I read recently in an interview that was done on another website concerning your interest in automobiles. I won’t rehash that territory, but being a fan of autos, do you have any particular favorites among the racing circuits – either CART, Indy, or NASCAR?

GW: Well, I watch drags. I like NHRA and I like NASCAR, too. I’m a John Force fan – the whole team in the drag racing field. I’m a huge fan of Carl Edwards. I like all types of racing. But NASCAR and drag – NHRA – would probably be my favorites [PWD note: as of 2011, Gene still owned and operated a body shop].

PWD: I’ve noted that some of the European labels have done a good job of getting some of your older recordings back in print. I have no idea who Hux Records is, but they became my favorite label when they started reissuing some of those old Capitol albums of yours. How did that come to be?

GW: I don’t know. You know, that was negotiated through Capitol Records. Unfortunately, I don’t own the masters. If I did, they would be available through me… Hux has been real good to put these selections together. They’re usually on a dual album set. The people that are fortunate enough to find them, they tell us how proud they are to have them back because a lot of those songs are out of print. You can’t buy them any more, so it just kind of gave them a new life when Hux came back with them.

PWD: Are there any plans for any of your MCA, Epic, or Warner Brothers cuts to be reissued?

GW: Yes, in fact I’m planning on going in the studio as quick as possible and starting to redo all of that stuff. Bring it back with better quality and all that and still keep the original Gene Watson feel on it. That’s one of our definite plans for the future, and hopefully within the next few months. [PWD note: this project was released as The Best of The Best – Twenty Five Greatest Hits in 2012. Gene used the original arrangements and as many of the original musicians as he could find – a definitive A+.]

PWD: I’ve seen recently that some of your recordings are available on the website for Tee Vee Records, King Records, Gusto – those labels. Are those new recordings or are those reissues of some of the older stuff?

GW: They’re reissues of the recordings from Capitol and Step One Records…

PWD: I thought it’d be interesting to maybe get you to discuss some of the recordings of the past. Would you mind?

GW: Okay.

PWD: Let’s see how it goes. I’m going to ask you first off about my absolute favorite Gene Watson recording – and there are about ninety-five others that are in second place – but the one that just really grabbed me when I first heard it was “The Old Man and His Horn.” It sounds like there should be a story behind that one.

GW: Well, there is. The same guy [Dallas Harms] that wrote “Paper Rosie” and “Cowboy’s Don’t Get Lucky All the Time” for me wrote that song and it’s been an extremely difficult song to follow through with. The recording was a little bit different because of the horns. We had trouble tracking them in studio – we laid down all the tracks at Bradley’s Barn here in Nashville – and when we recorded, we had trouble getting the horn on the track, so what we did was to lay down all the rest of the tracks, even including my vocal. Then, after we sought out the horn player that we wanted to use, we found that we couldn’t use trumpet, it was too brash. By the time we found what we wanted to do, we came back up to Sound Emporium – Jack Clement’s recording studio – and we went in and we put it on. Actually, what that is is a flugelhorn – it’s a little bit more mellow and everything.

PWD: I was wondering about that, it didn’t quite sound like a trumpet to my ear, but I don’t have a classically trained ear.

GW: Yeah, we tried trumpet, but it was too shrill, too brash, and cutting too hard. So we thought on it and looked around and done some research and everything and we wound up using a flugelhorn on it. Of course, you know, I can’t hire a horn player just to travel the road with me just to play one song, so it automatically became a thorn in my side as far as reproduction on stage. So what we did was, at that time I had my steel guitar player get an attachment to put on his steel guitar and we would do that horn part on the steel. It did work pretty good for a while. We had a lot of requests for that song and I appreciate you liking it.

PWD: It’s my favorite, although I must admit I’ve liked everything you have recorded. I remember first hearing, I guess it was around January or February of 1975, a song called “Bad Water” that I don’t think did a whole lot, but the follow-up, which I think was also originally on Resco, was “Love In The Hot Afternoon.” That was a great record and very different from what anyone else was recording at the time.

GW: “Bad Water,” that was a song that was originally out by Ray Charles’ background singers The Raelets. I decided to do it up country and believe it or not, that was the first song I ever had that got in the national charts. That got Capitol Records’ attention and when we re-released “Love In The Hot Afternoon” on Capitol they signed me to a long-term contract and that song turned out to be a giant for the year 1975.

PWD: I remember it well. It seemed to be on the air all the time in the area in which I live, which is Orlando, Florida. And it seemed like it was getting quite a bit of airplay on stations that weren’t country radio stations.

GW: Yeah, it was a good song for me.

PWD: … Do you have any particular favorites among the songs you’ve recorded?

GW: I’ve always had the freedom to pick and choose all of my material myself and it seems like to pick one as a favorite would be like picking one of your kids. .. There’s something about all of them that got my attention that I like. I’m not saying that all of them came out as favorites, but there was, anytime I recorded a song, there was something about it that I appreciated. “Farewell Party” is by far the most requested song that I’ve recorded, but I still like to do “Got No Reason Now For Going Home” and “Paper Rosie” and “Fourteen Carat Mind” and all that.

PWD: I think “Farewell Party” was your first #1, going to the top on Cash Box. If I recall correctly, that was a Lawton Williams song.

GW: Yeah, it was.

PWD: And it seems like years before your record I remembered hearing Little Jimmy Dickens do it.

GW: There were several people that had recorded it. Waylon Jennings, for one. Billy Walker and George Jones recorded it as had a lot of other artists.

PWD: I guess it took your touch to make a hit out of it though.

GW: I guess so. Because it’s sure been a good one for me.

PWD: It has. That and “Fourteen Carat Mind” are songs you still hear country bands performing all the time.

GW: That was a #1 hit in 1982, “Fourteen Carat Mind” was. I’ve been extremely fortunate and I owe all the thanks to the fans out there, and of course you guys who play the music. I try my best to record the best material I can and then it’s up to the folks whether it hits or not.

PWD: Do you have any songs that you recall that were offered to you first that you passed on that later became big hits?

GW: Oh yeah. Oh Lord, I heard “The Gambler” before Kenny Rogers did it. “The Girls All Get Prettier At Closing Time.” There’s been a lot of them, but that doesn’t mean that these songs would have been hits for Gene Watson. I mean they were hits for the people that recorded them, but there are Gene Watson hits and then there are other people’s hits and a lot of times it’d be like another artist recording “Farewell Party.” There were a lot of them before me that didn’t make it. When I recorded it, fortunately for me, it did. That’s kind of the trend that you have to look at when you’re considering material to record. You need to be careful and pick songs that you think are right for you.

PWD: One of the later hits that you had that I really liked, and haven’t been able to find it on CD, was “Don’t Waste It On the Blues.” That was a little different for Gene Watson.

GW: Yeah, it was a little uptown swing thing, almost modern jazz. I love that kind of stuff. I’m a lover of that type of music and it was a great song for me. Best I remember, I think it was a Top Five song.

PWD: …Did you ever have a song that you recorded that you just thought, “This has hit written all over it,” and then it stiffed for some reason or another?

GW: There have been several like that. In fact, I try to have that attitude every time I go in the studio, thinking that I’ve got a hit. You know that a lot of them are more capable of being hits than others, but that happens quite occasionally.

PWD: One that struck me that should have been a big hit that wasn’t, was a song you did titled “Carmen,” which I think was on your first or second Epic album.

GW: Yeah, that was a big song. In fact, that’s still a real big song overseas. When we were in Ireland and England and Scotland, the people over there just love that song and we always get requests for it when we go over there, but the title I think hurt the song a little bit in being confused with the old song of Marty Robbins’ called “Carmen.” Not that his was bad, but it was a hit and every time everybody saw the title they automatically thought that I had covered Marty’s song and that hurt it a whole lot.

PWD: Another Epic song I thought should have been a hit was “Honky Tonk Crazy”, a song local bands here in Florida often cover.

GW: Great song. That was my last album for Epic Records, and yeah, I thought it should have been a hit too. I really did. You can look down in that album and I was extremely proud of that whole album. I think everything in that album was really fantastic. Of course, it was produced by Billy Sherrill. I just thought it was a good album. I thought we should have got more response. I’m not sure we got all the help from Epic Records that we deserved, but for some reason or another, who knows why, it didn’t quite make it as good as we thought it would.

PWD: Were your parents musical people?

GW: My whole family was musical.

PWD: So you grew up listening to country music? Perhaps other forms of music ?

GW: Gospel, country, country gospel, and blues. I used to sing the blues and everything, so yeah, my whole family was musically inclined.

PWD: Who were your favorite artists when you were growing up?

GW: Oh I don’t know, I listened to all of them. Boy, back then they had the Top 10 on Sunday and I loved Lefty Frizzell. I thought he was fantastic, and Webb Pierce, Carl Smith, Faron Young. When Hag come in to play, oh it kind of ruled everything else out.

PWD: I’m not sure I’d agree with you there, but I liked all those names that you mentioned.

GW: Well I don’t mean ruled it out, I’m just talking about the new…I think Merle Haggard was more of an extension of Lefty Frizzell. I always loved Lefty, I loved his smooth approach. I liked the way he recorded things, and Ray Price, what can you say about him? I had a lot of favorites and it would be hard to pick one of them.

PWD: How about among the younger artists?

GW: I think one of the best artists out there is a guy by the name of Joe Diffie. I think he’s one of the finest vocalists that you’re going to find out there. My good friend Joe Nichols is a fantastic artist. There are several of them out there that I really, really admire and I appreciate what they do. There’s more of them out there that I don’t appreciate, but there’s some of them that’s got great talent and they’re for real.

PWD: I remember about a year or two ago you opened a show for Brad Paisley, didn’t you?

GW: Yes.

PWD: That must have been a little different experience with the type of audiences and venues he plays.

GW: My thing is my thing and I do it no matter who I’m working with, or opening for, or closing for or whatever. We never plan a show. I always hit the stage and the band, the only way they know what I’m going to do next is the way I introduce it to the people, and it was fun, it really was. I think the world of Brad. He’s a great artist and it was a real pleasure getting to work with him, but you know we do what we do and he does what he does and we all try to be successful at it.

PWD: … Any plans for perhaps a duet album with one of the leading female singers, say Rhonda or Alison or someone like that? I think that would really come off well.

GW: Well I think that a duet album is a possibility and the most likely duet partner, I would say at this time, would be Rhonda, if she would accept, and I think she would because we’ve both been on the same page as far as that goes and who knows, we might put that together. We’ve both talked about it. [Note: it happened!]